John Saul

Essayist and novelist, John Ralston Saul was born in Ottawa in 1947 to an officer in the Canadian army and his English war bride. He was educated in the public school systems of Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario before receiving an Honours B.A. at McGill University and a Ph.D. on the modernization of France at King's College, University of London. Mr. Saul is fluently bilingual. Mr. Saul's growing impact on political and economic thought in many countries was firmly established with his 1995 Massey Lectures. The resulting book, The Unconscious Civilization, won the 1996 Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction and the Gordon Montador Award for the Best Canadian Non-Fiction Book on social issues (1996). It was the concluding book of a major philosophical trilogy, the first two volumes being Voltaire's Bastards - The Dictatorship of Reason in the West and The Doubter's Companion - A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense. In 2001 he drew his conclusions about this trilogy with a new volume: On Equilibrium.

His five novels are The Birds of Prey (1977) and De si bons Américains (1994), both published first in French, and The Field Trilogy, which deals with the crisis of modern power and its clash with the individual. The last volume of this trilogy, The Paradise Eater, won the prestigious Italian Premio Letterario Internazionale. His books are translated into more than a dozen languages.

Mr. Saul launched a national debate with his reinterpretation of the nature of Canada in Reflections of a Siamese Twin, (1997) for which he again won the Gordon Montador Award (1998).

After creating and managing a European investment firm (1973-1976), Mr. Saul worked as Special Assistant and Policy Advisor to the founding Chairman of Petro-Canada from 1976 to 1979. Active in the cause of freedom of speech, he served as secretary, vice-president and president of the Canadian Centre of International PEN between 1987 and 1992. He is now its Patron.

He is Founder and Honorary Chair of Le Français pour l’Avenir / French for the Future and Chair of the Advisory Board of the LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium. Mr. Saul also serves on several other Boards, including that of the Harold Innis Research Foundation and le Comité d'Honneur, Rencontre Québécoise Internationale des Écrivains.

A Companion in the Order of Canada (1999), Mr. Saul is also Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France (1996). He holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of McGill, Victoria, Western Ontario, Simon Fraser, McMaster, UQAM, Manitoba, St. Francis Xavier, Queen's, Laurentian, Mount Allison, Herzen State, and Calgary. He received the first Canadian Teacher's Federation Public Education Advocacy Award (2000). He received The Tony Aspler Excellence Award for his contributions to the Ontario Wine Industry which was presented at Cuvée 2002.

May 2003

[source: Governor General of Canada site: http://www.gg.ca/john-ralston-saul/biography_e.asp]